What I, as a UNHCR ambassador, saw in Lebanon is a crisis the world shouldn’t ignore

I keep thinking about how quickly life can change – about the thin line between having a home, having safety, and losing everything.

I’ve been watching the conflict in Lebanon spiral – families forced to escape Israeli bombardments, carrying what little they can as they search for safety. Arriving in another neighbourhood, believing they will be protected, only to have to run again amid widening strikes.

I was in Beirut at the beginning of the year, chatting with young people in cafes and restaurants about their lives and plans for the future. So quickly, everything changed irrevocably.

I watch, I hope, I believe something will shift. Nothing does.

Almost every day, more people flee, as the number of safe places shrinks. More are killed, injured or displaced, and the scale of suffering mounts.

Families move, and move again. Some shelter in schools, classrooms lined with thin mattresses, people sleeping side by side. Places meant for learning and playing are now makeshift shelters. Many others are sleeping on the streets, in cars or on beaches.

Lebanon is a small country, now enduring immense devastation. Since 2 March, following intense strikes and widespread evacuation orders, more than a million people have been displaced by force – in a country already under immense pressure.

Entire neighbourhoods have been emptied; towns and villages destroyed. People are losing their homes, communities and the foundations of everyday life – roads, hospitals, schools, water, electricity.

This is not a temporary disruption. Lives are being dismantled with no end in sight.

This is happening while the world looks away, with too little being done to stop the war, which risks widening.

From Gaza to Lebanon, to Ukraine, Sudan and beyond, civilians are paying the highest price of conflicts and are too often left to endure the fallout alone.

This is not completely abstract to me.

My grandfather was a refugee. He fled Greece when the Nazis invaded Athens, finding safety in Syria. Growing up, his story shaped how I understand displacement and power.

Over the years, meeting refugees and internally displaced people – and most recently travelling in Lebanon and Syria with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency – has made that understanding impossible to ignore.

People caught up in war are often described as “resilient”. While they are, this word can become a quiet expectation: accept, adapt, carry on – whatever the cost.

Behind that resilience lies loss – of home, family, stability, the life that came before – and the quiet truth that none of this was chosen.

As a UNHCR goodwill ambassador, I’ve spent years listening to, and trying to tell, the stories of forcibly displaced people in a way that does them justice. But some things resist translation – fear, grief, the uncertainty of what is to come.

Too often, we treat these stories as distant – belonging to other people, regions, history.

Not long ago, Europeans were displaced across their continent. My own family lived that reality.

What’s happening in Lebanon extends beyond its borders and underscores a simple truth: anyone can be displaced.

What the people of Lebanon are asking for is in no way unreasonable: safety; peace; to go home, return to school and live a normal life.

These are not aspirations. They are rights.

Empathy makes us human. But if we allow ourselves to feel, only to then look away, we become part of the distance and silence that allows injustice to continue.

Unless we all act, with shared responsibility, this is the question we must face: where do you go when there is no safe place?

Actor and producer Theo James is a UNHCR goodwill ambassador. UK for UNHCR is urgently appealing for life‑saving support in Lebanon and beyond: unrefugees.org.uk/Lebanon-emergency